


i'll see you on the other side

by itsgameover



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Artist Kim Jongin | Kai, Jongin's Birthday Week 2021, M/M, Military Background, Soldier Do Kyungsoo | D.O, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29695980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsgameover/pseuds/itsgameover
Summary: Desperate to save his art, Jongin had trusted this man with a heavy look who said he loved seeing his exhibition, two summers before.
Relationships: Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Kim Jongin | Kai
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19
Collections: Challenge #14 — We Artist Baby!





	i'll see you on the other side

**Author's Note:**

> I recently rewatched a bunch of ww2 movies and felt the rush of inspiration to write something inspired by them. Hope you enjoy! <3

Lieutenant Colonel Do Kyungsoo is a short man with just a fingerbreadth of hair on his very round head and thick eyebrows that frequently seem to be one since he furrows them so much. In command there is no order of his that goes unheard, disobeyed, neither men under his power who have been left out to bleed. No one is left behind, he always says. 

It’s there, in those small things, that bleed through his soul without him noticing it, that one can see there is some much more under the surface. 

And there is something so beautiful about finding out the secrets under the uniform. The quirks and the buttons and the way he closes his eyes when sits under the sun. 

Jongin looks at him as the large trucks are loaded with his three largest paintings, wrapped in cloth tied with rope. There is a sculpture next to them and a few boxes with the smaller works. Most of his art goes in there, living and breathing under veils that keep them away from destruction. 

A shiver runs down his back when Kyungsoo turns around and they make eye contact. Kyungsoo looks down, shaking his head softly before patting the shoulder of his subaltern and heading off to meet Jongin in the middle of the dusty road. 

Jongin burrows deep into his layers upon layers of thick winter clothes, hopes he won’t hear what he knows he will hear. 

“Please,” Kyungsoo starts, taking from his pocket the safe passage, sealed and signed by the Army General himself “if you would just listen to me-”

Jongin shakes his head, “I’m not leaving my home.”

“Jongin-”

“I love you,” Jongin interrupts, Kyungsoo gapes. In the seven months the soldier had spent with him, never he would have thought the words he muttered half asleep, resting over his warm chest, would be whispered as a farewell. “After the war is over, I’ll be here, sleeping in my house, working in art like I always do.” He grabs the lapel of his open overcoat, playfully tugging it. “I’ll paint you, I’ll be sure to remember your eyebrows and your eyes.”

Desperate to save his men, Kyungsoo had taken over Jongin’s mansion, his safe haven outside of the city, running a field hospital with two tired doctors and three overworked nurses. Out of the nine hundred fifty four men who arrived at the mansion in the green trucks, only seven hundred made it alive. Sickness, wounds, dehydration, those who died were buried in the backyard. Jongin thought it was fitting that the old family cemetery finally held some more people worthy of being remembered. 

And desperate to save his art, Jongin had trusted this man with a heavy look who said he loved seeing his exhibition, two summers before. He could have never expected this ragged military man would have a soft spot for the arts, nonetheless there he was, knowing each painting by name, falling in love with the curves of his sculptures. 

And Jongin may have fallen in love with Kyungsoo when whispered, in an awe-inspired tone, that there was nothing more beautiful to him than the painting all the critics had hated. Jongin may have risked it all drinking wine and leaping forward to catch those precious plump lips with his, but the reward of the risk had been a gentle pull from his belt and a desperate groan when their bodies melted together. 

And now, desperate to never let him go but unwilling to leave it all behind, he hugs him in broad daylight and presses a fleeting kiss to his neck, plenty sure that if the rest of the man saw, they aren’t going to say a word. 

Still, Jongin hopes all remains a secret for only them to see. 

“I’ll see you on the other side of the war, Lieutenant Colonel Do.”

Kyungsoo smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. In those big doe eyes there is nothing but a sort of vacant look, the kind Jongin thinks hides the real sentiments of despair and separation this war has caused in his beautiful soul. 

He fishes in the pocket of his long jacket, winter is harsh but it will be worse if they stay in this part of the country any longer. The white army is chasing them with fury and soon this entire region will be overrun with white troops. Jongin stays, Kyungsoo leaves. Kyungsoo puts in Jongin’s hands a black rosary and kisses his knuckles. 

“Please, name my portrait after my favourite flower.”

“I’ll paint you with your favourite flower,” Jongin promises, solemn as he always is with art. 

“Can’t wait for the red roses over my lips,” Kyungsoo jokes and Jongin is sure that if they were inside his studio, they would have kissed goodbye. Instead, they just wave at each other. 

Jongin smiles, watches as the dust dissolves into nothingness, the trucks and the jeeps driving away to the south, to regroup with the rest of the army and plan the offensive strategy. 

Funny, he thinks as his fingers run from each of the little pieces of the rosary, Kyungsoo’s favourite flower is the daffodil, not the roses. Maybe Jongin should paint him with both. 

Maybe, if time is kind with him, with them, he gets to put daffodils on Kyungsoo’s hair, growing long and wild after years of this silly war, use his delectable self as a model and not only base his sketch in the fleeting memory of the very few times he saw him laugh. 

Maybe, Jongin thinks, putting the rosary in his bedside table along with the notes the soldier left for him (where to look after the war: his address, his work address -a shoe repair shop, downtown in the capital- possible hospitals where he could end, the cemetery where the catholics of his family have been buried for centuries), there is hope for the other side of the war. 


End file.
